20/12/2019

(AU) Australia Just Keeps Embarrassing Itself When It Comes To Climate Change

JUNKEE - Rachael Conaghan


“Do we really want to be remembered as the generation that buried its head in the sand, that fiddled while the planet burned?” That quote came from Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General, ahead of the COP25 — the 25th United Nations climate change conference — which wrapped up this week.
The answer, apparently, is yes.
The COP25 was the longest summit ever, yet the collective force of the biggest economies on the planet still managed to achieve less than one 16-year-old Swedish girl.

Australia was one of the countries given a shout out for our abysmal performance, but this is far from the first time we’ve been singled out for being a bit shit.
“An Increasingly Regressive Force”
Last week Australia was named the worst performing country in the world on climate change policy in the 2020 Climate Change Performance Index.
Look at us finally being recognised on the international stage.
The report states the Coalition government “has continued to worsen performance at both national and international levels.”
It also notes that our 2030 emissions reduction target is “insufficient” — that would be the same target our politicians keep boasting they are on track to meet.
“While the government is not proposing any further targets for renewable energy beyond 2020, it continues to promote the expansion of fossil fuels,” the report says. “Experts note that the new government is an increasingly regressive force in negotiations and has been criticised for its lack of ambition.”
ScoMo dismissed the report by saying it was not credible, which led to him getting embarrassingly called out by one of the report’s co-authors, Germanwatch, an institute devoted to sustainable development.
“Water Lapping At Your Door”
And there are plenty of examples of the absolute disdain with which our politicians treat developing countries who did little to cause the climate crisis, yet are suffering the most from it.
Our Deputy Prime Minister Reckons "Fruit-Picking" Will Save Pacific Islands From Climate Change
In August, Deputy PM Michael McCormack was caught on tape saying affected island nations would continue to survive by picking fruit in Australia.
The Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama said the disrespectful barb was a big step backwards for our relationship with Fiji.
But was it worse than Peter Dutton’s tone deaf joke about Pacific islands sinking?
In 2015 he was caught on camera joking with Scott Morrison and then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott about attendees at a roundtable running late, before referencing Port Moresby.
“Time doesn’t mean anything when you’re, you know, about to have water lapping at your door,” he said, which got a laugh from Tones before ScoMo made things awkward by pointing out the massive microphone hanging above them.
“Business As Usual”
Back in 2013, at the COP19, we didn’t even pretend to care about combating the world’s biggest existential threat.
The international climate change negotiations were held in Warsaw that year, and we didn’t even bother sending a government minister.
Instead, we sent a diplomat who went into the negotiations being deliberately difficult. This earned us criticism across the board, including from Europe, China, the Pacific and South Africa.
And we basically did the same thing at the COP25 this year, so not much has changed on that front.
Anyway, this led to the international Climate Action Network naming us the Colossal Fossil for 2013. The ‘award’ is bestowed upon the country that has done the most to block climate change action at the summit.
So great to have some recognition.
The Carbon Tax Is Gone
To be fair, our ministers were busy — while the summit was taking place, the Coalition government was introducing the carbon tax repeal bill, the first piece of legislation introduced by the new Abbott government.
Presumably no one thought about the optics of staying home to scrap legislation put in place to limit climate change while the rest of the world was trying to agree on new policies that would do exactly that.

Saying Screw You To Our Pacific Neighbours
The 2013 climate change talks commenced against a backdrop of disaster, with the Phillipines being hit by the devastating Typhoon Haiyan days before. More than 6000 people died and 4.1 million people were displaced.
This led to serious talks about compensation payments to developing countries being disproportionately hit by climate change. So what was Australia’s contribution?
According to the scientist who helped put the issue on the agenda, Saleemul Huq, we basically screwed the talks.
“Discussions were going well in a spirit of co-operation, but at the end of the session on loss and damage, Australia put everything agreed into brackets, so the whole debate went to waste,” he said.
A Climate Action Network spokesperson said Australia: “wore T-shirts and gorged on snacks throughout the negotiation. That gives some indication of the manner they are behaving in.”
Being deliberately obstructive at climate talks is one (terrible) thing, but to be deliberately obstructive when talking about aid for disaster zones … that’s an embarrassing new low.

Saying Screw You To Our Pacific Neighbours … Again
But this wasn’t the last time we pissed off our Pacific neighbours. They didn’t hold back in slamming us after the Pacific Islands Forum in August, where climate change was a central focus.
Australia expressed reservations about the Tuvalu Declaration, which called for emissions reduction, limiting coal use and funding for the UN’s Green Climate Fund.
The ensuing arguments bought the Prime Minister of Tonga to tears.
Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga wasn’t having any of our shit, getting into a heated discussion with our PM Scott Morrison.
“I said: ‘You are concerned about saving your economy in Australia’ … I am concerned about saving my people in Tuvalu,” he told reporters.
We even got slammed by China, with their Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang saying Australia should be reflecting on itself for acting like a “condescending master“.

Australia “A Disgrace” With Kyoto Targets
The Kyoto Protocol was the first international agreement to try and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It was adopted in 1997 but only came into force in 2005.
Australia likes to brag that we exceeded our Kyoto targets, and we did — by negotiating targets that allowed us to INCREASE our carbon emissions by eight per cent while the rest of the world cut theirs, compared to 1990 levels.
The EU environmental spokesman Peter Jorgensen called our deal “wrong and immoral … a disgrace”.
We also refused to sign the agreement until they added “the Australia clause“, which made sure it included emissions from land clearing.
We’d done a lot of land clearing before 1990, which pushed up the base level that our emissions were being measured against, but by the time Kyoto rolled around our land clearing had dropped off.
Basically, this meant we didn’t really have to change anything and we would still easily hit our target.
To this day, our government still uses this as an example of all the hard work they’re doing on climate change.

Carryover Credits “Not Winning Us Any Friends”
By exceeding our ridiculous Kyoto targets we earned carryover credits, which can theoretically be used to help meet our emissions reduction target under the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Australia set a 26 percent emissions reduction target by 2030 (remember, the one the Climate Change Performance Index said was inefficient?) which equates to 695 million tonnes of carbon.
We’ve got about 367 MT in credits, so using these is basically just a tricky way to cut our obligation in half.
But we’re not fooling anyone, and internationally we’ve been called out for it several times. At the recent COP25, about 100 countries were pushing for the use of credits to be banned.
The former president of Kiribati, Anote Tong, was deliciously brutal.
“Australia is on fire due in large part to climate change, and it is beyond me why the Australian government is looking for ways to weaken the Paris agreement so it and others can do less to solve the climate crisis,” he said.
John Connor, the chief executive of the Carbon Markets Institute, said Australia’s decision to use the credits is “not winning them friends”.
There are plenty more examples of our government provoking national outrage for their climate change policies, but honestly I’m too exhausted to go into it because it’s just too depressing.
Besides, obviously our government isn’t listening to us on the issue. Maybe if we become a laughing stock internationally it’ll shame us into actually doing something — and maybe it will help ScoMo make some friends.
Or maybe that’s too much to hope for.

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(AU) Too Hot For Humans? First Nations People Fear Becoming Australia's First Climate Refugees

The Guardian -  |

Key points
  • Aboriginal people in Alice Springs say global heating threatens their survival
  • The town had 55 days above 40C in the year to July 2019
  • Central Australian outstations are running out of water
  • Poor quality housing in town camps cannot be cooled effectively
  • Indigenous leaders fear extreme heat will cause influx of internal refugees
Josie Douglas sits on a verandah overlooking a ridge of red rocks and earth, scrubby with saltbush and spinifex near the centre of Alice Springs. It’s late afternoon and only 31C – a reprieve from a run of days in the high 30s and 40s.
But Douglas knows that from now on it will only get hotter.
Last summer was the hottest on record, and the driest in 27 years in central Australia. Five per cent of the town’s street trees died. A heat monitoring study showed that on some unshaded streets the surface temperature was between 61C and 68C.
“We can’t keep going on the way we’re going,” says Douglas, who is manager of policy and research at the Central Land Council.
“Central Australian Aboriginal people are very resilient. They have evolved to cope with the harsh and variable desert climate, but there are limits.
“Without action to stop climate change, people will be forced to leave their country and leave behind much of what makes them Aboriginal. Climate change is a clear and present threat to the survival of our people and their culture.”
Across central Australia, people are bracing themselves for another scorching summer of drought.
At least nine remote communities and outstations are running out of water. A further 12 have reported poor quality drinking water as aquifers run low and the remaining supply is saline.
Temperature records have already been broken. In the year to July 2019, Alice Springs had 129 days over 35C, and 55 days over 40C.
It wasn’t meant to be like this – at least, not yet. The national science agency, the CSIRO, predicted that these temperatures would not arrive until 2030.
Kamira Spring in 2004. Warlpiri elder, Henry Cook: “Ngapa (spring water) good country that one.” And Kamira Spring today. Composite: Central Land Council
As the Northern Territory’s environment minister, Eva Lawler, said last September: “If we don’t do anything, the NT will become unliveable.”
The problem is where to start.
In Alice Springs opinion is divided among local politicians about the impact climate change is having on life in the desert.
Heatwaves in Australia
Showing the projected increase by 2081-2100 in heatwave days relative to the historical average under a higher emissions climate change scenario (RCP 8.5). Heatwave days are defined as a day where at least three consecutive days are above a certain threshold for that location. Data is courtesy Dr Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, UNSW
Guardian graphic | Source: Perkins-Kirkpatrick, UNSW Climate Change Research Centre | Projections based on CMIP5 ensemble average
Sitting on the grassy lawn outside the council, Jimmy Cocking of the Arid Lands Environment Centre talks openly about climate refugees: those who have already come into town, and those who will have to come in the near future.
“We’re going to end up with a whole bunch of internally displaced people within the Northern Territory in remote Australia, if we’re not planning for that,” he says.
“If regional centres like Alice Springs and others aren’t planning to be able to deal with the influx of climate refugees internally within our region, we’re going to be left flatfooted and unable to deal with any of the challenges and social consequences that will come from that.”
Cocking is on the town council and has sought to pass motions to declare a climate emergency. But the mayor, Damien Ryan, is reluctant to sound the climate alarm.
“In local government speak, when you have an emergency, you close it down,” Ryan says.
“I have not had any of the people who talk about an emergency say what is the next step. So you declare an emergency, what do you do then the next day? That’s never been made clear to me.”
At its October meeting, the council did not agree on the word “emergency” but voted unanimously to say there was an “escalating urgency for climate action”.
Douglas and the CLC say Aboriginal communities are doing what they can.
“People are already mitigating climate change through traditional burning and they are investing their income from land use agreements to install solar power, plant bush tucker gardens in communities and operate swimming pools, but all that counts for little in the face of the lack of climate leadership from the government,” she says.

‘You see people hosing their brick houses’
The NT government says it has allocated $15m to “revitalising” the Alice Springs city centre. Some of those funds will go towards shade and landscaping to help cool the streets, and to public water stations. Ryan says the council is encouraging local schools to plant more trees.
Infrared image showing the temperature of streets, buildings and parks in Alice Springs. Image courtesy University of New South Wales
The Territory government says it has a climate change response strategy and is working with other governments and the Bureau of Meteorology to “develop national guidelines for the development of a warning system for extreme heat events”.
Mount Nancy town camp in Alice Springs. Many houses in town camps are poorly adapted for the heat and require a lot of water to run basic air-conditioning. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
In the meantime, Douglas says, people are living in houses that are “unbearable”.
“During our summers you can sometimes see people in communities hosing the outside of their Besser brick walls with garden hoses to keep cool despite the water shortages – that’s how desperate they are.”
About 3ookm north-west of Alice Springs is Yuendumu, the largest remote community in central Australia. Its 900 or so residents are facing summer without a reliable supply of adequate drinking water.
The NT government has stopped building new housing because there isn’t enough water in the dwindling aquifer to accommodate more people.
Yuendumu is not alone.
The Central Land Council’s chief executive, Joe Martin-Jard, says that at every regional meeting, water security is top of the agenda.
“Between Alice Springs and Mount Isa, there’s probably only one major community with a decent water supply,” Martin-Jard says. “We’re not getting the rain we used to, to recharge the aquifers. So as water is drawn out of the aquifers it becomes more saline and less potable [drinkable].
“It’s a really horrible dilemma.”
 Water supply and quality issues in remote Indigenous communities
This map shows the location of communities in central Australia, highlighting those that have either poor water quality, are water stressed, or experiencing both poor water quality and water stress 
Guardian graphic
The NT’s Power and Water Corporation, which is responsible for essential services in 72 remote communities and outstations, says most communities in the arid region are “faced with some level of water stress” and emergency planning is under way, but there are “rarely any simple solutions”.
“The difficult reality is that many communities originally developed historically in locations where there was never any secure, reliable, high quality water resources in close proximity,” a spokesperson said. “As those communities have grown … and expectations of improved levels of service have appropriately increased, the challenges also continue to increase.”
Power and Water says more drilling programs are planned but “finding new water sources is very challenging and often these drilling programs have moderate prospects for success”.
“Without large or extended rainfall … the water security risks will progressively increase in some centres, with an increased likelihood that source supply capacity at some could fail.”
At least 12 communities have reported poor quality drinking water. At Laramba, Willowra and Wilora, nitrates and uranium are at levels exceeding health guidelines. NT Power and Water says it is “investigating alternative technology options”. It has already installed treatment plants at Kintore, Ali Curung and Yuelamu to reduce high levels of nitrates, uranium and fluoride.

‘Air conditioning is essential in the desert’
In Alice Springs’ 18 town camps, where people from out bush often end up, houses are commonly built from Besser bricks – hollow concrete blocks which are cheap, but which trap the heat. There’s a lack of tree cover or other kinds of shade. Houses bake in the sun and, while the majority have solar panels, they often have only an evaporative air conditioning unit, known locally as a “swampy”, to cool the house.
A vacant house at Mount Nancy town camp. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
A “swampy” uses a lot of water and can struggle on hot days, especially when there are a lot of people sharing a house, which is common in town camps with big families and fluctuating populations.
“Air conditioning is an essential item in the desert, not a luxury,” the CLC’s Josie Douglas says, “but it does not come standard.” When remote community and town camp tenants are offered housing, there is “a hole where the aircon unit should be and they are told to buy it themselves”.
“Many can only afford to ‘close the gap’ with a piece of wood, or run expensive reverse-cycle aircon very sparingly,” she says. “Some places don’t have enough water to use a cheaper swampy.”
A ‘swampy’ unit at a boarded-up house, Mount Nancy. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
Houses that don’t cool down overnight create big health and social problems.
“People resort to sleeping outside, or cramming everybody into the coolest room of the house, with all the well-known consequences for the spread of diseases that whitefellas only know from medical textbooks.
“It’s also common for people to sleep in shifts, with young people roaming the streets at night where they get into trouble, and sleeping during the day when they should be at school.”
This is at odds with the NT government’s view of the quality of town camp and remote community housing. A government spokesperson tells Guardian Australia that homes are designed with weather conditions and regional climate in mind, and they include external shading, natural ventilation and insulation.
“Investment into housing in town camps has included the installation of louvres, sunscreens, verandas and insulation,” the spokesperson said. “The Department of Housing and Community Development has also upgraded some key community infrastructure including improved shading and the installation of fans.”
Douglas is calling on the government to “stop building concrete hotboxes”.
“More than a decade ago, the government and the CLC were partners [in research] that came up with really solid recommendations about how to make desert houses more energy-efficient and communities more resilient.
Ntaripe (Heavitree Gap) in Mparntwe, Alice Springs. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
“Some measures, such as making sure houses are built with the right orientation … and have passive cooling and a white roof, cost almost nothing. We would like to know how many of these expensive research findings have been implemented in our region.”
Shirleen Campbell is a Warlpiri and Arrernte woman who grew up at Hoppy’s Camp, or Lhenpe Artnwe. She told the Alice Springs climate rally in October that town campers were very worried about climate change.
Shirleen Campbell says town camps need investment in renewable energy sources. Photograph: Supplied/Tangentyere Women's Family Safety Group
“This is our place,” she said. “If it gets too hot, if we suffer through endless droughts or we spoil our water, then we don’t have another place to go.
“We want houses that are right for this place and right for our people. We want to invest in renewable energy, like solar.”
Campbell is a co-coordinator of the women’s family safety group at Tangentyere council, which delivers services to and advocates on behalf of town camp residents.
“Most of all we want people to treat this place as a legacy to be handed down to our children and grandchildren. It is not a speculative commodity and it is not something to be sold or exported.
“We have been here for a long time and want to look after this place for those that come after.”

Keeping cool in the library
There are few public places in Alice Springs to cool off. The Yeperenye shopping centre has security guards at the doors and, according to Douglas and Campbell, Aboriginal people are regularly moved on.
The library is a popular, free cool space. There’s a widescreen TV rigged up with headphones, showing movies. Westerns are popular, as are replays of AFL grand finals. The Saltbush room down the hall is a haven for older folk, while little mobs of kids hang out among the young adult stacks or cluster around the phone-charging station.
A refuge from the heat: the Alice Springs library. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
“We found there’s a gap in after-school care services from about 2.30 to 4.30, the hottest time of the day,” says the head librarian, Clare Fisher. “The kids can come to the library, cool off, have fruit and sandwiches.”
Clare Fisher is the head of Alice Springs library, where many residents come to cool off. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
“Libraries are for connection and relaxation as well as knowledge. We make everyone welcome – but we explain how to use the library and how to behave as well. We very much believe in come and be who you are.”
The Saltbush room at Alice Springs library is a refuge from the heat with a DVD library and a local history section. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
Thirsty and dying animals culled
In January footage of dead and dying horses in a dry creek bed at Ltyentye Apurte, 80km south-east of Alice Springs, flashed around the world.

Lltnye Apurte rangers clearing out dead feral horses from the creek bed at Apwerte Uyerreme, a normally reliable waterhole. Photograph: Supplied/Centrla Land Council
The Ltyentye Apurte rangers had the unenviable task of dragging more than 100 dead horses from the creek bed and disposing of their bodies.In June the CLC conducted an emergency cull of more than 1,400 feral horses, donkeys, camels and cattle from a waterhole near Lajamanu. The animals were thirsty and dying, congregating around the last remaining springs and water sites.
The CLC has eradicated 6,279 feral animals in preparation for summer. Traditional owners don’t usually support animal culls, the CLC says, but there were no alternatives, with so many animals dying or in poor condition.
Feral animals damage community infrastructure and housing. Thirsty camels, for example, will attack air conditioning units because they smell water, and lay waste to water tanks, bores, fences, pipes and taps.
 Not only horses suffered during the heat wave. Martin Bloomfield, Maxwell Blue and Troydon Fishook from the Arltarpilta Inelye ranger group rescued two young cows and a perentie from waterholes near Atitjere. Photograph: Supplied/Central Land Council 
How hot is too hot? Heat, health and housing hotboxes
Tangentyere’s social policy and research manager, Michael Klerk, is in discussions with the CSIRO to install temperature data loggers in people’s houses, to build a case for improvements that are taken for granted elsewhere: solar power, insulation, better air conditioning, wide awnings, more shade.
“Last summer – which was a very hot summer, soon to be repeated – a lot of anecdotal feedback was that people’s evaporative air conditioners weren’t cooling the houses sufficiently,” Klerk says.
Town camp housing typically lacks simple features to keep cool, such as insulation and wide awnings. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
“This probably reflects the reality that evaporative air conditioners are not good at cooling houses when the external temperatures are in the mid-40s.
“You might drop the temperature of a house to mid-30s, but that’s not an optimal internal ambient temperature for comfort or for health.”
Most people living in town camps and remote communities, and some in suburban public housing, have pre-paid electricity meters.
Residents are issued a power card, which they top up with their welfare payments or income. Once the credit is spent, they have to top it up again, or go without electricity. Klerk says that happened a lot in the last quarter of 2018.
In Alice Springs, 420 of 570 households with prepaid electricity meters had at least one self-disconnection, which lasted, on average, 7.5 hours. Of the 570 Alice Springs meters, 285 are in town camp dwellings.
In effect, more than half the town campers ran out of money to pay for electricity.
“When the power goes off, it is bad for our health, the food gets spoiled, we can’t wash our clothes and we can’t wash our kids,” Shirleen Campbell told the rally.
“In summer, when our houses are hot or when we don’t have electricity, our people look for comfort in air-conditioned public places. We are not always welcome in these places and sometimes there are problems. We are thankful for places like the library and the pool.”
Klerk says low-income residents shouldn’t have to go broke trying to keep their houses cool. “It’s not acceptable that people’s houses are making them sick, and something really needs to be done about it. It shouldn’t all be passed on to the consumer.
“If it’s the case of people having to spend more money to keep the houses at a temperature that delivers health outcomes, then we have to rethink the levels of income support that are available to people, particularly in these regions where it’s so hot.”
Michael Kerk of Tangentyere Council says many residents went without electricity in the last quarter of 2018. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
Predictions by the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress for the health impacts of heat are dire. In its submission to the NT government’s climate change policy discussion paper, it outlined some of them: “Increased sickness and mortality due to heat stress, increased food insecurity and malnutrition, increased risk from infectious disease, poorer mental health and an increased potential for social conflict.”

‘The antidote to despair is action’
The Pintupi-Luritja artist Irene Nangala was among the first to return to her home country at Kintore in the western desert, near the border with Western Australia, in the early 1980s.
Until then, Pintupi people had been living a long way from home at the mission at Papunya, and they were homesick.
Nangala helped set up the Kintore school. It was a “windbreak school” at first, she says: just a tarp to keep the sun and the rain water out.
“Then we got a few teachers. It was hard work. We’ve got a proper good school now, proper shop. Nice clinic and aged care, child care.”
Nangala says she doesn’t have an air-conditioner. On hot days the family puts blankets on the windows. Other elders whose aircon units break down have to wait for a repairer to come from Alice Springs, more than 10 hours’ drive away.
“It’s really hot in Kintore. We can’t go and sit outside. We have to go at night to sit down with the families.”
Pintupi-Luritja artist Irene Nangala. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian 
Nevertheless, Nangala says she does not want to leave.
“We built up Kintore,’ she says. “People are really enjoying going back to their grandfather’s land. That’s the right thing to do. And it’s good for them to go back, the old people, good for the heart and the spirit.
“When they went first, they cried, they missed that place for a long time.”
Nangala says people don’t want to come into town, where life might be worse.
“Climate change is true,” Nangala says. “They [politicians] got the map and weather things, they should see the temperature what is happening around Australia, it’s so hot.”
Jimmy Cocking says: “We are walking blindly into the new climate reality. We’ve moved beyond hope, and we can’t be running on hope alone.
“The only thing that is going to get us over the line is action. And the antidote to despair is action.
“So there’s a lot of things that we need to be looking to change so that we aren’t going to be putting people’s lives at risk.”

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Gift Guide: 12 Books On Climate Change And The Environment

Yale Climate Connections - 

Twelve provocative books describe the challenges Americans face in a climate-changing world and offer solutions, including personal political action.



The first weeks of this year’s “official” holiday shopping season coincide with COP 25 – the 25th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The delegates meeting in Madrid, Spain, are discussing ways for countries to carry out and then strengthen the emission reductions they promised in the Paris Agreement. For those who will not be traveling to Madrid, the books listed below offer engaging, even entertaining ways for individuals to celebrate and strengthen their own commitments to act on climate change, whether through personal education and enrichment, lifestyle changes, or activism.

The descriptions of the 12 books listed below are drawn from copy provided by the publishers. All prices in US dollars.


A Better Planet: Big Ideas for a Sustainable Future, edited by Daniel C. Esty (Yale University Press 2019, 416 pages, $30.00)

The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change and the UN’s adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals have highlighted the need to address critical challenges such as the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, water shortages, and air pollution. But in the U.S., partisan divides, regional disputes, and deep disagreements over core principles have made it nearly impossible to chart a course toward a sustainable future. This timely new book, edited by Daniel C. Esty, offers fresh thinking and forward-looking solutions from environmental thought leaders across the political spectrum. Their forty essays cover such subjects as ecology, environmental justice, Big Data, public health, and climate change, all with an emphasis on sustainability.


More From Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources – and What Happens Next, by Andrew McAfee (Scribner’s Books 2019, 352 pages, $28.00)

 Throughout history, the only way for humanity to grow was by degrading the Earth. Since the first Earth Day in 1970, the reigning argument has been that taking better care of the planet means radically changing course: reducing our consumption, learning to share and reuse, and restraining growth. In More from Less, by contrast, McAfee argues that we need to do more of what we’re already doing: growing technologically sophisticated market-based economies around the world. How can he possibly make this claim? Because America – a large, high-tech country that accounts for about 25% of the global economy – is now generally using less of most resources year after year – and placing less stress on the environment – even as its economy and population continue to grow. While acknowledging still unsolved problems like global warming, More from Less is a paradigm-shifting account of how we’ve stumbled into a better balance with nature.


On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal, by Naomi Klein (Simon & Schuster 2019, 320 pages, $27.00)

On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal gathers for the first time more than a decade of journalist Naomi Klein’s impassioned writing, and pairs it with new material on the staggeringly high stakes of our immediate political and economic choices. These long-form essays show Klein at her most prophetic and philosophical, investigating the climate crisis not only as a profound political challenge but as a spiritual and imaginative one as well. Delving into topics ranging from the clash between ecological time and our culture of “perpetual now,” to the soaring history of humans changing and evolving rapidly in the face of grave threats, to rising white supremacy and fortressed borders as a form of “climate barbarism,” this is a rousing call to action for a planet on the brink.


The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, the Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560-1720, by Dagomar Degroot (Cambridge University Press 2019, 386 pages, $29.99 paperback)

 Dagomar Degroot offers the first detailed analysis of how the precocious economy, unusual environment, and dynamic intellectual culture of the Dutch Republic in its seventeenth-century Golden Age allowed it to thrive during the Little Ice Age, even as neighboring societies unraveled in the face of extremes in temperature and precipitation. By tracing the occasionally counter-intuitive manifestations of climate change, Degroot finds that the Little Ice Age presented not only challenges but also opportunities that Dutch citizens aggressively exploited in conducting commerce, waging war, and creating culture. Their success in coping with climate change offers lessons that we would be wise to heed today, as we confront the growing crisis of global warming.
Editor’s note: Degroot recently published an accessible summary of his book with Aeon.


Anointed With Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America, by Darren Dochuk (Basic Books 2019, 688 pages, $35.00)

 Anointed with Oil places religion and oil at the center of American history. As prize-winning historian Darren Dochuk reveals, from the earliest discovery of oil in America during the Civil War, citizens saw oil as the nation’s special blessing and its peculiar burden, the source of its prophetic mission in the world. Over the decades that followed, the oil industry’s leaders and its ordinary workers transformed American religion, business, and politics — boosting America’s ascent as the preeminent global power, giving shape to modern evangelical Christianity, fueling the rise of the Republican Right, and setting the terms for today’s political and environmental debates. This sweeping, magisterial book transforms how we understand our nation’s history.


Waters of the World: The Story of the Scientists Who Unraveled the Mysteries of Our Oceans, Atmosphere, and Ice Sheets and Made the Planet Whole, by Sarah Dry (University of Chicago Press 2019, 380 pages, $30.00)

 Linking the history of the planet with the lives of those who studied it, historian of science Sarah Dry follows the remarkable scientists who summited volcanic peaks to peer through an atmosphere’s worth of water vapor, cored mile-thick ice sheets to uncover the Earth’s ancient climate history, and flew inside storm clouds to understand how small changes in energy can produce both massive storms and the general circulation of the Earth’s atmosphere. Gradually, their separate discoveries coalesced into a unified working theory of our planet’s climate. We now call this field climate science, and in recent years it has provoked great passions, anxieties, and warnings. By revealing the complexity of its history, Waters of the World delivers a better understanding of our planet’s climate at a time when we need it the most.


McSweeney’s Issue 58: 2040 AD, edited by (The McSweeney’s Store 2019, $26.00)

 Spanning six continents and nine countries – from metropolitan Mexico City to the receding coastline of Singapore – McSweeney’s 58 is wholly focused on climate change, with speculative fiction from ten contributors, made in collaboration with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Each story is set in the year 2040 and imagines what the world might look like if the dire warnings issued by the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C were to come true. Featuring authors Tommy Orange, Elif Shafak, Luis Alberto Urrea, Asja Bakic, Rachel Heng, and others, with gorgeous full-color illustrations by Wesley Allsbrook, this handsomely bound volume explores the tangible, day-to-day implications of these cataclysmic scientific projections.


Bad Environmentalism: Irony and Irreverence in the Ecological Age, by Nicole Seymour (University of Minnesota Press 2018, 320 pages $26.00)

 Activists strive to educate the public about climate change, but sociologists have found that the more we know about alarming issues, the less likely we are to act. Meanwhile, environmentalists have acquired a reputation as gloom-and-doom killjoys. In response, Nicole Seymour develops the concept of “bad environmentalism”: cultural thought that employs dissident affects and sensibilities to reflect critically on our current moment. She identifies works that respond to the absurdities and ironies of climate change through absurdity and irony – as well as camp, frivolity, irreverence, perversity, and playfulness. Funny and original, Bad Environmentalism champions the practice of alternative green politics, expanding our understanding of how environmental art and activism can be pleasurable, even in a time of undeniable crisis.


Greta and the Giants: Inspired by Greta Thunberg’s Stand to Save the World, by Zoe Tucker (author) and Zoe Persico (illustrator) (Frances Lincoln Children’s Books 2019, 32 pages, $17.99)

 This inspiring picture book retells the story of Nobel Peace Prize nominee Greta Thunberg – the Swedish teenager leading a global movement to raise awareness about climate change – using allegory to make the topic accessible. In this telling, Greta is a little girl who lives in a beautiful forest threatened by Giants. They chop down trees to make houses. Then they chop down more trees to make even bigger homes, until now there is hardly any forest left. Greta knows she has to help the animals who live in the forest, but how? The conclusion explains that the fight against the “giants” isn’t over and suggests ways young readers can help Greta in her fight. Three percent of the cover price of each book, printed on 100% recycled paper, will be donated to 350.org.

Selections from previous bookshelves*


One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon by Charles Fishman (Simon & Schuster 2019, 480 pages, $29.99)

 One Giant Leap is the sweeping, behind-the-scenes account of the furious race to complete one of mankind’s greatest achievements. It’s a story filled with surprises – from the item the astronauts almost forgot to take with them (the American flag), to the extraordinary impact Apollo would have back on Earth, and on the way we live today. Charles Fishman introduces readers to the men and women who had to solve 10,000 problems before astronauts could reach the Moon. One Giant Leap is the captivating story of men and women charged with changing the world as we knew it – their leaders, their triumphs, their near disasters, all of which led to arguably the greatest success story, and the greatest adventure story, of the twentieth century.
Editor’s note: The full list of books and documentaries Yale Climate Connections reviewed for the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing can be found here. To that list can now be added The Apollo Chronicles: Engineering America’s First Moon Missions by Brandon R. Brown and The Moon: A History for the Future by Oliver Morton.


The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, by David Wallace-Wells (Tim Duggan Books 2019, 320 pages, $27.00

 In his travelogue of our near future, David Wallace-Wells brings into stark relief the climate troubles that await – food shortages, refugee emergencies, and other crises that will reshape the globe. But the world will be remade by warming in more profound ways as well, transforming our politics, our culture, our relationship to technology, and our sense of history. It will shape and distort nearly every aspect of human life as it is lived today. Like An Inconvenient Truth, The Uninhabitable Earth is both a meditation on the devastation we have brought upon ourselves and an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation.


The Ice at the End of the World: An Epic Journey into Greenland’s Buried Past and Our Perilous Future, by Jon Gertner (Penguin Random 2019, 448 pages, $28.00)

 The ice sheet that covers Greenland is 700 miles wide and 1,500 miles long, and contains nearly three quadrillion tons of ice. As this ice melts and runs off into the sea, it not only threatens to affect hundreds of millions of people who live in coastal areas, it will also have drastic effects on ocean currents, weather systems, economies, and migration patterns. In The Ice at the End of the World, Gertner chronicles the unfathomable hardships, amazing discoveries, and scientific achievements of the Arctic’s explorers and researchers with a transporting style – and a keen sense of what this work means. The melting ice sheet in Greenland is, in a way, an analog for time. It contains the past. It reflects the present. It can also tell us how much time we have left.

*The editors thank the readers who suggested that titles like The Uninhabitable Earth deserve a second mention at this time of year.

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